A twice-weekly syndicated newspaper column on California public affairs.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

TUBE WEAR, RADIOACTIVE KELP ADD TO QUESTIONS ON NUCLEAR RENEWALS

CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MAY 8, 2012, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D.
ELIAS

“TUBE WEAR, RADIOACTIVE KELP ADD TO
QUESTIONS ON NUCLEAR RENEWALS”

Anyone looking for the most
under-reported story of the spring in California need seek no further than the
tall stalks of kelp swaying back and forth just beneath the ocean surface along
much of the California coast.

Fish eat kelp; so do small crustaceans
near the bottom of the food chain which themselves are later consumed by larger
fish that sometimes become food for humans. The largely-neglected news story is
that it’s been somewhat radioactive off-and-on for months and it concentrates
Iodine 131 isotopes at levels 10,000 times higher than what’s in the
surrounding water.

At the same time, steam generator
problems have kept the San Onofre nuclear generating station near the
Orange-San Diego county line closed for three months, with no reopening in
sight as California heads into the summer season of peak electricity
consumption. This combination of events ought to have California authorities
deeply questioning the state’s heavy reliance on power from both San Onofre and
the Diablo Canyon atomic plant on the Central Coast.

The facilities aren’t due for
relicensing until the early 2020s, but the utilities that own and operate them
began preparing last year for license renewal proceedings.

Despite absorbing
radioactive iodine isotopes, the California kelp is still not “hot” enough to
endanger diners – at least so far as is now known. But lobsters and some
species of fish like mullet concentrate and retain radioactivity, which would
increase with any newly “hot” seawater.

Just 15 months ago, none of this was a
worry. San Onofre was running smoothly. The kelp was fine. Even at Diablo
Canyon, where skeptical state legislators wondered whether an earthquake fault
discovered after the plant was built might produce temblors larger than the 7.5
level it was made to withstand, things were copacetic.

But then came a
great Japanese earthquake and tsunami, followed by meltdown and significant
leakage of radioactivity from that country’s Fukushima Daiichi generating
station.

Contaminated iodine and cesium rose
into clouds that crossed the Pacific and dumped heavy rain along the California
coast about one month later. Shortly thereafter, two scientists from Cal State
Long Beach tested kelp from various parts of the Pacific Coast, finding no
radioactivity off Alaska, but plenty of iodine and cesium isotopes off
California.

The fallout from the Japanese disaster
was sufficient to force evacuation of large swaths of that nation’s east coast.
And while Iodine 131 has a half life of about a month – meaning it wasn’t a
threat for long unless fish or crustaceans concentrated it much more heavily
than was found in the kelp they ate, the cesium (detected only in lower
concentrations so far) lasts much longer, and will likely remain in sea life
for more than 30 years.

At the same time, the problems at San
Onofre – operated by Southern California Edison Co. – remain unexplained and
the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it won’t allow a restart until
the pattern of premature wear in steam generator tubes is explained and
corrected. The agency is normally the nuclear industry’s best friend and
enabler in government.

Off Diablo Canyon, Pacific Gas &
Electric Co. is spending $64 million to make the first precise map of seismic
faults offshore from that generating station. But even that survey probably
will not produce full answers to questions about how much danger may exist,
because PG&E will measure neither the pace of possible tectonic plate
slippage nor the frequency of past quakes in the immediate area. Instead, the
utility says it will depend on calculations of assumed slip rates.

That kind of incomplete data might
have been one enabling factor in the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, which
demonstrated that even a partial meltdown many thousands of miles away can
produce measurable radiation increases here.

No one knows how much more
contamination a Fukushima-like quake and tsunami near either San Onofre or
Diablo Canyon could cause. Nor does anyone yet know how bad the problems may be
at San Onofre.

If these questions don’t reinforce the
need for meticulous analysis in considering relicensing the two California
nuclear stations, it’s hard to see what could.

For sure, no one looks more prescient
today than the 10 legislators who wrote the NRC weeks before Fukushima begging
for public hearings in California before the renewal proceedings go very far.
The point was not necessarily to deny renewals, but to take them slowly and
with a maximum of public information.

What happened afterward in Japan and
at San Onofre makes hearings all the more imperative, while also highlighting
the need for very careful analysis of all potential hazards and the reliability
of all safety and mitigation measures.

-30-

Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough:
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

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About Me

Thomas Elias writes the syndicated California Focus column, appearing twice weekly in 88 newspapers around California, with circulation over 2.2 million.
He has won numerous awards from organizations like the National Headliners Club, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Los Angeles Press Club, and the California Taxpayers Association. He has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize in distinguished commentary.
Elias is the author of two books, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It" (now in its third edition; also published in Japanese and recently optioned for a television movie) and "The Simpson Trial in Black and White," co-authored with the late Dennis Schatzman.